1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to a cleaning apparatus, and particularly to a cleaning apparatus which is disposed on an image forming apparatus such as an electrophotographic copying machine, microfilm apparatus or laser beam printer etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a conventional image forming apparatus which repeats a step that transfers a toner image on a surface of an image bearing member (e.g. a photoconductive drum) onto recording material (such as paper), alien material (such as toner or paper dust etc.) remains after transferring. The alien material adversely effects the operation of the image forming apparatus. For that reason, it is an indispensable condition to provide a cleaning apparatus for removing the alien material to obtain a fine image.
As shown in FIG. 4, in a conventional cleaning apparatus 100 which is provided in an image forming apparatus having a image bearing member 103, a cleaning roller 101 such as a fur brush roller or a magnetic roller is disposed to mainly remove paper dust. Also, a cleaning blade 102 is provided downstream of the cleaning roller 101 to remove remaining toner together with the cleaning roller 101. The remaining toner and paper dust which are removed by the cleaning roller 101 and the cleaning blade 102 are collected and transported by the cleaning roller 101. A scraper 104 contacts the cleaning roller 101, thereby, the remaining toner and paper dust are collected into an accommodating part 105 of the cleaning housing 106.
The remaining toner or paper dust which are removed by the scraper 104 are accumulated in the accommodating part 105 of the cleaning housing 106. When the accommodating part 105 is filled with the alien material (remaining toner and/or paper dust), the cleaning apparatus 100 is exchanged for a new one.
However, in the conventional cleaning apparatus 100, when the cleaning apparatus 100 is exchanged, there is a problem that the remaining toner or paper dust spills from a gap between the cleaning blade 102 and the cleaning roller 101 of the cleaning apparatus 100, to thereby dirty the image forming apparatus.